Page 2 of Break Out

I stopped. Lord knew why, because every instinct said to run, not walk to my Vespa. Problem was, it was on the other side of campus.

“Let me explain please,” Jordan said from behind me.

Ever the fool, I turned around.

One glimpse of him and clarity hit me. I recalled a strange interaction between us earlier in the day. I’d come out of the bathroom and into the living room where he sat sifting through his stuff. After a sideways glance of me in my form-fitting, black dress pants and dressy blouse, Jordan had asked if that was what I was wearing.

My bone-colored faux-leather top only bordered on being conservative since it looked like leather. I wanted to be slightly conservative for my Product and Process presentation. Bonus, it wasn’t dressy enough that I’d stand out like a sore thumb at the dive bar.

“Yeah, it is. Is there something wrong? A stain or something?” I’d asked.

His lip curled up a little. “No, it just looks like something a biker bitch would wear.”

Seeing as the top was a gift from Aunt Abby, wife and old lady to Blood, the Vice President of the Riot MC, Jordan wasn’t exactly wrong. Motorcycle club life had been both a point of connection and contention between us. My parents had encouraged me to move away for college and get out of the biker lifestyle. Jordan’s father wasn’t just an MC president, he was president to a mother chapter. Jordan hated that about his dad, because his dad had left when Jordan was five years old. He couldn’t fathom how a man could abandon his family for years. Any time I asked him which club his dad ran, Jordan refused to talk about it. He was that bitter.

With my hands behind my neck, I clasped my jade necklace. “To be fair, Jordan, a biker bitch would get this top in blood red or black, and she wouldn’t be in dress pants.”

His brows furrowed. “Those are dress pants?”

That conversation should have been my sign that things weren’t okay. Hell, the fact we hadn’t had sex in almost two months should have tipped me off – but I figured we were both busy.

A harsh gust of wind brought me out of my thoughts and I blew out a sigh. “What do you want, Jordan?”

He opened his mouth, closed it, and finally said, “It’s not that I don’t care about you.”

I stared at him and my chin lowered an inch. His words held no sincerity – not that I’d have believed him anyway.

He shrugged. “You’re from a family of bikers.”

“You knew that,” I reminded him.

“You even ride a Vespa around campus.”

I laughed. “You’ve got to be joking! A thousand other girls ride those things around campus and nobody looks twice. Please. Riding that thing is nothing like a bike. Hell, my dad and all his brothers want to get me off it. If you only heard the flack I get for my helmet alone.”

He shook his head. “Whatever, Simone. I need someone… different.”

I glanced past him. Tennyson stood holding the purple door of Vicious Vinyl open.

My focus shifted back to Jordan. “By all means, Tennyson’s waiting for you.”

“Don’t be like that, Simone. I’m trying to be… nice.” Jordan said.

I nodded. “Mission accomplished.”

My brain had felt like mush when I turned in my final exam. Now, my body moved as though some other force drove me. I wondered how I’d missed the signs, but then I realized I hadn’t. Not really. We’d been living together for more than two years, but his insistence on moving in with his buddy should have given me more cause for alarm. I’d argued against it, but in the end I gave in much easier than I would have a year prior.

As much as people talk about the power of love, it boggled my mind how falling out of love could be such a gradual experience. Things didn’t always end with an epic blow-up, and on some level that was more blindsiding. My heart was breaking, but it felt like a scab that had been reopened. I hadn’t understood how deep the cut ran until I’d been forced to acknowledge the pain.

I turned around and walked up the block. In a haze, I passed a coffee shop, a convenience store, and a few other places where I could have stopped and pulled myself together. While I waited for a walk signal to cross a side street, I contemplated an upscale tapas restaurant. A large group of guys sat outside. They were loud and getting rowdy. I didn’t want to be around that scene.

The signal changed and I kept moving. At the end of the block, I saw a hotel that housed a pizza place Jordan had refused to try. Some bullshit excuse about any restaurant inside a hotel was either over-priced, no good, or worse: both. The red door for Pi House caught my eye and snapped me out of my fog.

It seemed as though my life had turned to shambles with Jordan’s bombshell, but I still had plenty to celebrate. The more I thought about it, Jordan had done me a favor. He wouldn’t be around any more to criticize me or keep me from doing the things I wanted to do.

Yep, it was definitely time to party. Even as a mere party of one.

My stomach growled as I tugged open the heavy red door. The aroma of roasted garlic, fresh bread, and tomato sauce hit me the moment I stepped inside. From four feet to my left a middle-aged man with a pot belly crowed, “A girl like you should smile more.”

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